U.S. v. Woolbright

• Decision Date: 22 October 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2414,86-2414
• Citation: 831 F.2d 1390
• Parties: 23 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1277 UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Jerry Wayne WOOLBRIGHT, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 1390

831 F.2d 1390

23 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1277

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Jerry Wayne WOOLBRIGHT, Appellant.

No. 86-2414.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted June 10, 1987.

Decided Oct. 22, 1987.

Lawrence J. Fleming, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant.

J. Bennett Clark, Asst. U.S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., for appellee.

Before ARNOLD and WOLLMAN, Circuit Judges, and DUMBAULD ^*, Senior District Judge.

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Following a jury trial, Jerry Wayne Woolbright (Woolbright) was convicted of one count of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and one count of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. The district court ¹ sentenced Woolbright to fifteen years' imprisonment on the cocaine count and ten years on the methamphetamine count, to run consecutively. On appeal, Woolbright argues that (1) he was unconstitutionally arrested without a warrant or probable cause, (2) the search of his luggage was not properly conducted within any of the exceptions to the fourth amendment requirement for search warrants, (3) the district court erred in admitting the testimony of a fellow arrestee who was separately tried, and (4) the district court improperly admitted testimony under Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) concerning a past drug-related arrest. We reject these contentions and affirm the judgment of conviction.

I. FACTS

At 5:30 p.m. on May 19, 1986, a man with purple streaks in his hair and three earrings in one ear deposited the body of Amy Creeley at Christian Northwest Hospital in Florissant, Missouri, outside St. Louis. Doctors pronounced Ms. Creeley dead on arrival. The man who had delivered the body, later identified as Midnight Bobby Dolan (Dolan), left before police could question him. Florissant police suspected that the death was caused by drug overdose.

At approximately 2:30 a.m. on May 20, 1986, Detective Robert Kenney (Kenney), of the St. Louis County police, telephoned Police Officer Timothy Nisbet (Nisbet), also of the St. Louis County police, and informed him that he, Kenney, had received information that a man matching Dolan's description was in a suite of rooms on the eighth floor of the Harley Hotel in north St. Louis County. Kenney was working a second job as a Harley Hotel security guard at the time. Nisbet relayed Kenney's information to the Florissant police, who were investigating Ms. Creeley's death.

While waiting for Nisbet to arrive, Kenney positioned himself to observe the suite of rooms occupied by Dolan. Kenney observed Woolbright emerge from one of the rooms and check to see if the door leading to the fire escape was locked.

Nisbet and several Florissant police officers arrived at approximately 2:45 a.m., and shortly thereafter a female, later identified as Lisa Randle (Randle), exited from the room under observation. When she noticed the police in a small room off the hallway outside the room, Randle immediately attempted to reenter the room but was detained by the police. Randle, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs, made exculpatory statements to the police. Dolan (he of the purple-streaked hair) then came out of the room carrying a single piece of luggage, walked directly towards the police officers, and requested that they search his bag. The officers declined to do so. Moments later two more men emerged quickly from the same room and hurried towards the fire escape. Nisbet and Kenney identified themselves as police officers and ordered the two men to stop, but only when Kenney drew his revolver and repeated the command did the two men comply.

When the two men stopped and turned around, Nisbet recognized one of them as Woolbright from previous investigations. Woolbright was carrying four pieces of luggage and also had a large bulge in one of his pants pockets. The officers directed the two men to lie on the floor and patted them down. The bulge in Woolbright's pocket was a large sum of cash, which Woolbright claimed amounted to $3,200 but was actually $8,700. The second man identified himself as Steve Wilson (Wilson), whom the Florissant police knew to be Ms. Creeley's live-in boyfriend. Wilson was carrying a plastic bag that the officers observed was full of syringes. The officers arrested all four detainees for suspicion of the murder of Ms. Creeley and seized the bags they were carrying.

The Florissant police requested that the suspects be taken to the Florissant police station. However, because the Harley Hotel is not within the jurisdiction of the Florissant police, Nisbet conveyed the suspects to the St. Louis County Detective Bureau Building, where they arrived at approximately 4:15 a.m. Each suspect was placed in a separate room for questioning, and the luggage was placed in a locked and guarded room.

Nisbet interviewed Randle first. After being advised of her Miranda rights, Randle stated that she was on a "honeymoon trip" with Woolbright. Nisbet then interviewed Dolan. At about 6:00 a.m., after questioning Randle and Dolan, Nisbet approached Woolbright. Woolbright indicated that he wanted an attorney, and Nisbet did not question him. Woolbright also indicated that he was a diabetic and needed medical attention. Woolbright was taken to a hospital and was returned to the detective bureau at approximately 8:00 a.m.

At approximately that time, Nisbet, along with an Agent Crowley of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), began questioning Wilson. Wilson told Nisbet the following: Ms. Creeley died of an overdose in Hazelwood, Missouri, after he had injected her with cocaine; Woolbright had supplied Wilson with cocaine; Wilson called Woolbright to help him dispose of Ms. Creeley's body; Woolbright had solicited the aid of Dolan to drop the body at the hospital in Florissant.

All interviews were concluded at approximately 10:00 a.m. Nisbet concluded that the jurisdiction of the murder was Hazelwood, not Florissant, and informed the Hazelwood police. At approximately 11:00 a.m., the St. Louis County police began processing each suspect as a "fugitive of the Hazelwood Police Department; for murder," to be transferred to the Department of Justice Services of St. Louis County for further processing and incarceration in the county jail.

At this time, Nisbet began inventorying the suspects' bags. Several hundred methamphetamine pills, more than two-hundred seventy grams of cocaine with an approximate street value of $60,000, and various drug paraphernalia, including a scale, syringes, and a ledger indicative of drug transactions, were found within the bags Woolbright was carrying. Upon this discovery, Nisbet released Woolbright to the F.B.I. for processing on federal drug charges. Woolbright was never booked on any state charges relating to Ms. Creeley's death.

II. PROBABLE CAUSE TO ARREST

Both the magistrate and the district court concluded that there was probable cause to arrest Woolbright for murder. A district court's finding of probable cause to make a warrantless arrest will not be overturned unless clearly erroneous. United States v. Wajda, 810 F.2d 754, 758 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1981, 95 L.Ed.2d 821 (1987); United States v. McGlynn, 671 F.2d 1140, 1143 (8th Cir.1982). The existence of probable cause sufficient to justify a warrantless arrest depends on "whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it--whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense." Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964) (citations omitted) (quoted in United States v. Rose, 731 F.2d 1337, 1342 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 931, 105 S.Ct. 326, 83 L.Ed.2d 263 (1984)); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 162, 45 S.Ct. 280, 288, 69 L.Ed.2d 543 (1925) (do the facts known to the officers "warrant a man of reasonable caution" to believe an offense has been committed). When making this determination, the district court may consider the "collective knowledge and information of all of the officers involved." United States v. Rose, 541 F.2d 750, 756 (8th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 908, 97 S.Ct. 1178, 51 L.Ed.2d 584 (1977); United States v. Briley, 726 F.2d 1301, 1305 (8th Cir.1984).

Police officers may draw reasonable inferences of criminal activity from circumstances that "the general public may find innocuous," Wajda, 810 F.2d at 758 (citation omitted); United States v. Wallraff, 705 F.2d 980, 990 (8th Cir.1983), particularly when they are experienced, as is Nisbet, a sixteen-year veteran with four years on homicide. United States v. Jones, 759 F.2d 633, 642-43 (8th Cir.) cert. denied, 474 U.S. 837, 106 S.Ct. 113, 88 L.Ed.2d 92 (1985).

At the time of Woolbright's arrest the totality of circumstances was as follows. Approximately ten hours earlier Ms. Creeley's dead body had been dropped at a nearby hospital by a man with purple-streaked hair and three earrings in one ear. Drug overdose was the suspected cause of death. The man with the purple hair was known to be in a room at the Harley Hotel with some others. Woolbright had emerged from the room, checked the access to fire escape, and returned. Randle had left the room, tried to return after noticing the police, but after being detained and informed that the police were investigating Ms. Creeley's death, spontaneously offered exculpatory statements about Dolan and the deceased. Dolan approached the officers and asked them to search his bag in an apparent attempt to distract the police from the activity of Woolbright and Wilson.

Woolbright and Wilson attempted to exit quickly from the scene by the eighth floor fire escape at 3:00 a.m. carrying luggage, hardly a routine time and mode of departure. Neither responded until Kenney drew his gun and commanded them a...